


Without Saying Goodbye

by KrisEleven



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:06:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrisEleven/pseuds/KrisEleven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco wasn't even paying him, why would August feel the need to tell him if he decided to ride out of town as unexpectedly as he'd rode in? If Marco believed that August would not leave without saying goodbye, if was only because he wanted to believe it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without Saying Goodbye

* * *

Marco looked, again, at the clock he and August had repaired. It was nearly three hours after August was supposed to arrive, and Marco was worried. He'd appeared every day, faithfully, since they had first agreed to this apprenticeship; it wasn't like him to disappear.

He shook his head, smiling ruefully. Marco wasn't even paying him, why would August feel the need to tell him if he decided to ride out of town as unexpectedly as he'd rode in? If Marco believed that August would not leave without saying goodbye, if was only because he _wanted_ to believe it. It was nice to have the young man to spend days with. It was almost like...

Marco sighed at himself. Yet again, he proved himself a sad old man missing something he'd never even had.

A shudder passed through him, like that bone-deep shiver of deep cold or an unexpected fright. Everything he knew to be real turned over and over and shattered as another lifetime of memories forced their way into his mind and heart. Marco had spent his entire life living in the shadow of what he did not have. He had always felt that the pain he carried over a child that had never existed should not have been so very bad.

But his son _had_ existed. And even though Geppetto hadn't remembered Pinnochio, his heart had never once stopped missing him.

His eyes alighted on the clock, again, and he faltered for a moment as he tried to recognize something through his panic, but the thought fled him. Stumbling from his shop, he looked up and down the street. He didn't think of the curse and his fake memories and the lost time. The only thing he wanted was to find his son.

Emma could only be Snow White and the Prince's daughter, but why wasn't Pinnochio with her? Geppetto had no memories of his son after he had hidden him in the wardrobe, giving him away for the chance that he would be saved. He spent the day frantically asking anyone who would listen, but at the end of it, Geppetto sat in Granny's nursing a coffee that failed to warm him, accepting that his search came up fruitless because his son had never made it to Storybrooke.

And then Henry whispered in his ear and everything he should have known made sense again.

The years had changed him, but Geppetto should have known. That _something_ behind the panic of waking and realizing that his son had been missing with no one looking for him for nearly thirty years should have told him; he had known as soon as he had seen the clock that August had helped to fix. Geppetto would recognize Pinnochio's work anywhere.

Holding his son's hat in an empty room, Geppetto knew that his heart hadn't ached for twenty-eight years without reason. And he knew that one day his son would return:

Geppetto believed that Pinnochio would not leave without saying goodbye.


End file.
